The day before Kofi Annan arrived, there had been as many as 4 000 people living in makeshift shelters in the patch of grubby sand between the fast-flowing river and the row of tiny headstones which mark the cemetery at Meshtel, in North Darfur.
But in the middle of the night, that number had been reduced to zero.
Hours before the United Nations Secretary General came to see the squalor of Meshtel, its inhabitants were herded into government trucks and dumped at the gates of a nearby organised refugee camp.
As Annan’s entourage spilled out of their four-wheel drive cars into the empty clearing between the river and the graveyard, the government claimed that the camp had been cleared for the benefit of the refugees.
The social affairs minister, Ahnoun Mohammed, who was escorting the United Nations visitors, said: ”Every day we move people. Now they will have enough water and have police to protect them. It was planned and not because of the secretary general of the UN coming.”
But after conferring with colleagues, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, said: ”At midnight these people were moved to be dumped outside Abu Shouk [a nearby UN camp], but they are not accepted at the moment. [Camp officials] say 40 000 refugees at Abu Shouk is already too many.”
The aim of the visit had been to illustrate the miserable conditions in which a third of Darfur’s refugees live, outside the properly run camps. The Meshtel camp had sprung up on a patch of low ground that will be flooded when it begins to rain hard, which will be any day now.
Families had been packed together in crude thatch shelters, an easy breeding ground for diseases.
Egeland suggested that the camp would most likely spring up again when the secretary general left: ”Probably these people will be back tonight at Meshtel.”
Thursday was the first time Annan has visited Darfur, at a time when the UN faces criticism for being slow to respond to the crisis in this western part of Sudan.
At a camp in Zam Zam, about 17km south of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the secretary general listened as a group of refugee women told him how they were forced to flee their villages and were now being terrorised by Janjaweed militia who were surrounding the camp.
Kneeling on a straw mat under an acacia tree, Annan on Thursday promised the refugees that they would not be forced to return home against their will.
”I am in discussion with the government to make sure there is security so that you can go home,” he said. ”We understand you cannot go home without security.”
With his hand over his heart, Annan went on: ”Nobody is going to force you to go home without security. As long as you are in the camp we will try to do everything we can to make sure you are secure.”
There are more than one million people who have fled their homes in Darfur and are living in more than 100 camps. But there are also another million who have lost their livelihoods because of the havoc caused by the war. The violence meant there was little planting of crops in May, and aid workers say that this year about 350 000 people in the whole of Darfur could die of disease or malnutrition.
Egeland confessed that the UN had been slow to act in Darfur. He said: ”We have to admit that we are late. The parties fought for too long before they signed a ceasefire. We were blocked by the government more or less effectively until the end of May.”
He also criticised wealthy states within the UN that had failed to respond to the crisis. – Guardian Unlimited Â